We believed in the old America..it will be gone soon..after the collapse it may or may not be rebuilt..
“After all, it’s not like they’ll trust the analysis of a non-conservative like me more than the numerous fellow conservatives who constantly tell them things that turn out not to be true.”
At first I scoffed. But upon reflection, mMaybe I should trust the “analysis” of “non-conservatives.” It’s their “facts” I don’t trust because they lie so easily about them. Their analysis, though, that the gullible sheep in the electorate believe their lies is spot-on.
True, conservative pundits, even the venerable Michael Barone, were wrong about the polls showing 0’s lead. I agreed with them, not because I live in an echo chamber, but because I shared a similar assumption about voters not being eager to return an incumbent who has presided over a disastrous economy. Nate Silver and the other number crunchers were right. But what this says about the character and values of the US electorate is gloomy at best.
On the other hand, the article is entirely self-serving. The reason that Benghazi didn't become an issue in the campaign was not because the president and his administration weren't guilty of dereliction of duty, but because the MSM itself decided that it wasn't interested in putting the story before the electorate.
This article is very happy to call conservatives who got things wrong a bunch of ignoramuses, but entirely avoids the issue of outrageous MSM bias in favor of 0, Benghazi being only the most egregious example. And that bias, oddly enough, is why conservatives despise the MSM and discount what they say.
The media misinformation and disinformation agenda has a lot to do with the electorate being so ignorant. Despite the loss, I’d still say that republicans and conservatives are much better informed than democrat voters.
The liberal media is a big reason, if not the biggest, for the Obama win.
So, if it’s the media that is at fault, why can’t republicans take back the media, or at least, equal it???
I think it can be done, and it could be done very quickly with the new age tools, such as the internet and all the many different devices which people use to get their “version” of the news and information.
I’m just scared that someone is going to start shooting left-wing media types.
A ham sandwich should have beaten Obama into the dust
Face it, the 47% is the 51% now
You stay classy, Conor Friedersdorf!
I don't think anybody was seriously "misled" -- not misled more than journalists on both sides always "mislead" their readers or viewers.
Everybody understood that Romney had weaknesses and that Obama and the mainstream media would exploit them.
Most people understood that this was going to be a close election that would come down to a comparatively small number of votes in a few states.
Some of the rank and file deceived themselves into thinking that Romney would win by a landslide but I don't see the "conservative media" actively talking anybody into taking that position.
Partisan enthusiasts do that on their own, whatever information they have.
It’s the echo chamber effect. In this case everybody was noticing the big drop in support Obama was suffering, but nobody bothered to notice that Romney wasn’t getting as much support as McCain, everybody assumed he’d do no worse. And of course when the only people you listen to are people that agree with you...
I suspect the 2012 results were equally shocking to the Democrat pollsters.
Did the new Democrat wonder boy Nate Silver predict that Obama would get 9 million fewer votes in 2012, and still win?
Of course not.
Did Nate Silver predict that Romney would get 2.4 million votes less than McCain?
Of course not.
Did Nate Silver predict that minority voters would increase by 2% in 2012?
Of course not.
A good portion of the conservative media let us know just how unconstitutional Obama has been, and how we couldn’t let him win. You can’t say what many said, and then go back to politics as usual. It’s time to stop trying to fix a broken system within that broken systems framework. We have no good options at this point, but it’s clear we need revolutionary sized change to save anything good. It’s time for a new revolution, and that’s basically been supported by those conservatives in the media who have shown just how legitimate a revolution is at this point based on the disregard for our Constitution, and the enormous amount of soft tyranny we live under. Even if they can’t accept support calling for a revolution at this point, they have already made the case for it.
There was certainly a whole lotta wishful thinking going on in the conservative camp. I admit that, skeptic though I am, I fell for some of it. Hope is a powerful temptation. But next time maybe I’ll be smarter.
Ping
where was the turnout? R turnout was terrible
Did you steal your dad’s laptop?
Yep. All we heard was how it was in the bag. That it’d be a landslide blah blah blah. What they did was effectively dull the edge we had. They damped our anxiety and doubt which lead to voter apathy. That and the fact half the damn country doesn’t pay for shit so they vote with their own selfish needs first.
What I learned from the article:
mite = factual
In truth, the MSM is no more factual than FOX, Limbaugh, etc.
What they have going for them is numbers pure and simple.
It also helps that liberalism requires no thinking, just feelings.
I have been a listener of Limbaugh since 1985 and a consumer
of MSM “news” since long before Limbaugh. I would venture
to submit that there wouldn’t be a need for Limbaugh or FNC
if millions of Americans believed that their point of view was
being honestly presented in the MSM.
Truth is not subject to a vote. This country will pay a heavy
price partially because the MSM is more interested in pro-
tecting an incompetent president than working toward what
is right. Would the MSM let a Republican president slide on
the Benghazi “incident” seven weeks before an election?
How about Fast and Furious? Those are just two more
recent examples of many that should bring shame to the
“Fourth Estate”. It should but it won’t.
My concern is that to the extent that’s the situation with the conservative media, it’s even more so (albeit in the opposite direction) with the mainstream media. I say, a pox on both. Preferably Clinton-grade STD.
There is a grain or two of truth in the article posted and ksen’s initial comment. Take out the spin, and you are left with a large fact— the electorate that showed up looked more like what the polls were finding than what people like Barone were saying would be the case. I like Barone and most of the other commentators the Atlantic writer mentions negatively, but how could they all fall into the same rookie mistake— likely voter party ID is a finding, not a demographic, and you make adjustments for demographics, not findings. Sure there are more problems
in constructing a random sample that plausibly resembles real world demographics than there used to be (cell phones, hang ups, etc.), but once the person that your procedures say you want to talk to is in fact talking to you, and they say they identify with the D’s rather than the R’s, then that answer is not something you adjust for
This is not to be taken as a defense of Nate Silver, since I do not understand his methodology at all, but I do know a little bit about survey research and statistics from graduate school back in the 70’s, enough to have recognized that the state polls were almost universally saying that the 2012 electorate would look a lot more like 2008 than 2004, and that we were in trouble. If I’m smart enough to have figured that out, I can’t believe someone like Karl Rove wasn’t. So, why didn’t they say it?
I am a long time lurker, seldom poster and then only long ago and i’m not a troll. This result is a real blow to freedom. But if the truth is what will make you free, we suffered from a shortage of it. A lot of good people are shell shocked now who wouldn’t be if they had been told that this was going to be a close election with Obama a slight favorite. I hope they recover quickly because the fight has to continue at the local, state and national levels.
The Atlantic author has some valid points. Many of us on Free Republic were saying many of the same things about Mitt Romney before he won the Republican nomination.
Here's an example:
“You haven't just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election. Why do you keep putting up with it? Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.”
Mitt Romney won the 2012 nomination because real conservatives couldn't get our act together and unite behind a single candidate. Via divide-and-conquer strategies, Romney won despite being the least conservative of the serious Republican candidates in 2012, using the mantra of “let's fix the economy” and downplaying the social issues that fire up much of the Republican base.
The article in the Atlantic is sounding very similar themes to what we've been saying for a long time on Free Republic about Mitt Romney, and I believe we need to take it seriously.
We also need to take seriously the fact that when Republican pollsters tried to predict the 2012 election, they underestimated the depth of support for Barack Obama among his key supporters. People who don't usually vote did vote in 2012, and voted in large numbers for Obama.
We need to select candidates who fire up our base as much as Obama fired up the Democratic Party's base, or we're going to keep losing elections.